If you can’t stand the length of professional basketball,

the width of sumo wrestling from video game Japan will confound you,

leave you sucking back Vietnam-era defoliants in the dark

looking for game show door prizes behind smudged crybaby

peep holes that claim to have called the cops

and there is no reason to disbelieve the general alarm

in their voices, the entire building with a fire escape back

down to gravity and hardly above using it

so that you blood rush down the stairwell in your

only girlfriend’s fur boots that probably clubbed a baby seal

right out of the ballpark in the top of the sixth

so a crowd of 70, 000 strong can cheer you

as you run off and round third with one set of keys

and three used tissues in your pocket.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Punk Noir Magazine, In Between Hangovers, The Raw Art Review, The Dope Fiend Daily, and The Rye Whiskey Review.